00:00The Brewers' slogan is, win our way.
00:03Oh, I'm not chanting that. Can we get a better one?
00:05It can be like a wow thing, you know, win our way.
00:07Wow, it works both.
00:08No, do you have to say it in a Wisconsin kind of deal?
00:11Like, wow.
00:12Oh, wow. That's Owen Wilson right there.
00:14That's very Owen Wilson there.
00:15Oh, wow.
00:16And he's from Texas.
00:16I don't know why his ass is sounding like he was from Wisconsin, but he is.
00:19I don't think you can explain him to just about anybody in any sort of way.
00:22I don't want to.
00:23I just want him to exist.
00:24I've always really liked him.
00:27Both Wilson brothers.
00:28Yeah, I've always really liked him.
00:28Not just because of the last name.
00:30I don't know why.
00:31Like, I just, that's a vibe.
00:32I want to, am I the lost Wilson brother?
00:35No, not at all.
00:36But I really wish I could ride those coattails.
00:38There's just so many good movies and so many like Wedding Crashers, all sorts of ones where
00:41you're just like, I don't know that Owen Wilson can act at all, but I like him in this.
00:45Yeah, but he plays Owen Wilson and I'm fine with that.
00:48But obviously, today we're going to split a little bit on the Browns at 4-2 and talking
00:54about what happened in the ALCS.
00:57And it was, it really, that's the way that one was going to go.
01:02If you dreamed up all your fears about a game six trying to bridge the gap to Gavin Williams,
01:08that's how it would go from putting Heron in second and that backfiring to, I mean,
01:14Matt Festa getting action somehow before Tanner Bybee into just every single lever that
01:20Steven Vogt tried to pull last night, didn't work from the pitching side of things.
01:24And then the hitters just once again came up short to end 2026 for the, the Guardians.
01:29There is some sense of, uh, you go seven for 37 with runners in scoring position after
01:34Vogt the entire year told us that we're going to get that taken care of.
01:37We're going to, that's, we're going to have that one figured out.
01:39If you hit below the Mendoza line with runners in scoring position, you just, uh, offensively
01:44stink up the joint really from game two on.
01:47And this was the way it was supposed to always go.
01:49And the thing about it is the cruel irony of being a Cleveland fan is there was something
01:54in that game one win that it was just like, oh, we can do this against a team of, of
02:01this
02:01level of talent.
02:02And by the way, I still think they had the talent to be in there.
02:05I just don't think they had the right mix of whatever you need in the right time, health
02:10and all the other stuff.
02:11And the offense just never came together the way you needed to, but it really somewhere in
02:16there, you really started to believe this team was going to be, uh, in the world series.
02:20And I think that's what has people so damn moody today is we went literally in four days,
02:26we went from thinking, Hey, they can do this.
02:29And not only can they do this, but this would be the year that you win the world series because
02:33you've got another guardians as team in the world series to being like, uh, so it's
02:38vote going to be here next year.
02:40Uh, Joe Adele, what are we doing next year?
02:42Well, will we have baseball next year?
02:44Yeah, but there, there was always something that felt unsustainable, but what they were
02:47doing when you were getting production, like the 27 Yankees, and this is not the 27 Yankees.
02:51It's, it's kind of, it reminds me of like when Joe Flacco went on that heater, when they
02:54won the Superbowl and for a month straight, he played better than Peyton Manning.
02:57Like they get some point you're like, clock's going to strike midnight.
03:00You're going to turn back into that pumpkin.
03:01You're just kind of hoping that it can be a month long heater instead of, I don't know,
03:05a four or five game heater.
03:07Like it was.
03:07Yeah.
03:08And, and here's the thing.
03:08I do think that this offense is sealing if they had been together since day one and
03:14healthy.
03:14I think there was, I don't think you ever got the full amount of what this offense could
03:19be.
03:19And some of that is you got a lot, a lot of really young guys who are learning to hit
03:23at
03:23this level.
03:23But some of that's like, man, can you imagine if you had an extra 80 games of Nathaniel
03:28Lowe, a professional hitter in your lineup, not just what he can do, but his impact on the
03:32rest of the lineup.
03:33Joe Adele, uh, Hosey being that, like, if you had told me before the season, uh, Delauder
03:39Bazzana and Hosey are going to be your offense and Hosey is going to go ahead and have a,
03:44uh, a pretty bizarre injury in the middle of the season.
03:47And it'll never really make it all the way back.
03:49Oh, but by the way, uh, the bullpen will be great at points and not great at other points.
03:53You can really only trust two starters going into October and then said, oh, and you'll
03:57be within a game or two of the world series.
03:59I would have been, I would not have believed that would have been a recipe that would have
04:02actually happened, but there is some small miracle with a 70% Hosey that you got as close
04:09to the sun as you possibly did this year.
04:11Yeah.
04:11I mean, and this feels like the right spot where the guardian should have ended up.
04:14If we're being honest about it, you were the two seed.
04:16You can, you were a much better team than the White Sox in my estimation.
04:19That's why you tracked them down and won the central.
04:21And then your season ended on a skid against a team that was, I don't know, 13 games better
04:26than you in the final standings.
04:27Like, like it was, this is not a, this is not an awful way to go out.
04:31I understand that the excitement after being up two games to one and thinking that this
04:34team could just do something miraculous, but this is, this is not a bad baseball season
04:38by any sort of metric or any sort of way you look at it.
04:41This was fun and you just got to take it for what it is.
04:43Yeah.
04:43I listen, I was the guy saying I would take a Browns win over a game five, the ALDS win.
04:49So I realized that I have to tread lightly here.
04:52You made it to the ALCS with one of the youngest teams in baseball and with a bottom five payroll.
04:59Any time you, and by the way, you've, you've made it consistently into the playoffs.
05:03You've made the playoffs three straight years under those same circumstances.
05:06Two LCS appearances.
05:07Two LCS appearances with a brand new manager starting three years ago.
05:12Like there's so much of, of like what they've been able to do with vote in certain, this
05:17was the toughest year, by the way, you didn't have Hosey for what, 60 games.
05:21And when Hosey came back, he wasn't Hosey.
05:23And you were able to still eke out winning the AL Central.
05:27I don't care if it was a soft year for the AL or not.
05:30You got the two seed.
05:31You were able to somehow come back against the White Sox.
05:35Like I think sometimes we can have disappointment while also having reverence for what has actually
05:42been accomplished this year by the Guardians, because this was the best job.
05:47Steven Vogt has done as a manager, even though it was the least regular season wins he's had,
05:52because he was winning with a team he didn't know what he could trust on any given night.
05:56Yes, since the trade deadline, the bullpen was phenomenal.
06:00Specifically in September, they really put it together.
06:02It was up and down for most of the year with Gattis and Sobrowski both having their moments
06:08of complete just awfulness.
06:10The rotation and Tanner Bybee going bye-bye.
06:13Joey Cantillo, I mean, falling out of the rotation.
06:16Even Foster Griffin being a boomer bust guy in the second half.
06:20The lineup being what it is.
06:22Like, so much of great coaching is knowing what you can trust and then relying on that
06:27and taking that as far as it'll go.
06:30There wasn't a lot you could trust from moment to moment with this team, and that's how you
06:35end up taking a 2-1 lead in the ALCS and end up going home in six games.
06:40Yeah, I mean, again, it's a different feel for us today than, let's say, Yankees fans after
06:44they were knocked out by the Rays, or even you can go to Red Sox fans, or any of those
06:48teams that had higher expectations in the American League.
06:51Like, we did outperform what we should have performed this year.
06:54There's no other way to look at it.
06:55You're projected to win basically 81 games this season.
06:58You make it to the ALCS.
06:59That's a win.
07:00Now, what I'd like and hope for is that a couple years from now, if we lose in the ALCS,
07:04we're having some of that disappointment that the Yankees fans get to have, where it's
07:07like, hold on.
07:08How did this happen?
07:10We're a much better team than this, but that's not where the Guardians are right now.
07:13We're in the overachieving stage of what this Guardians team is.
07:16I'm not here to tell you he did a perfect job.
07:19And I think specifically the Bybee thing, I think never going to Hanau and just seeing
07:23what he could do, I think, is another thing.
07:26I think going back to Bailey instead of Hedges in Game 5, I think, was a risk that was unnecessary.
07:33So I'm not trying to say he had the perfect series or the perfect season.
07:37But I'm officially, Michael, get the sounder ready, I'm officially decreeing that Stephen
07:42Vogt has the Peterlin pass from Nick Wilson.
07:46Okay.
07:46The Peterlin pass.
07:49Yeah, I mean, it's just so hard to manage in baseball.
07:51And it's so hard, especially with these rosters.
07:53I think people expected perfectionists.
07:55And I expected something maybe better than Matt Festa in a closeout game or a game you
07:58have a chance to be eliminated.
07:59But he was dealing with a lot.
08:01And I thought for the most part, he pulled the right strings.
08:04Yeah, I mean, I think there are legitimate frustrations that you're allowed to have with
08:09Stephen Vogt.
08:09But also falling back on, I don't know, okay, Terry Francona, I don't know with one of the
08:15five youngest or three youngest teams in baseball and a bottom five payroll, I don't think Tito
08:21has this team in the ALCS.
08:23And if you had told me that three years ago, I might have smacked you in the face.
08:26Because Tito is still one of the best managers I've ever seen.
08:30There's still a lot of love for Tito in this town.
08:32I'm not trying to do the revisionist history thing.
08:35But Vogt was, and he was 100% guilty of overmanaging this year.
08:40Once again, that's what happens when you don't know what to trust or who to trust.
08:44So you over-rely on the few guys you actually do trust.
08:48And it's as simple as the offense didn't come to play the way you needed them to.
08:52It's as simple as they just didn't have that right mix.
08:56There were things that they could have done that might have given them a better chance to
09:00win this series, but I think ultimately, like, the offense went in the turlet three or four
09:06times this season, and that's why you ended up being an 85-win team instead of a 93-win team.
09:10Yeah, if you were going to get to the Rays, you had to do so before Yandy and Caminero,
09:15and really their top three in their lineup woke up.
09:17That's what it was.
09:18I mean, at first five games of this series, or first four games of this series, excuse me,
09:21they were five for 34, those three players that I mentioned.
09:24And they woke up.
09:25Diaz had a home run yesterday.
09:26Caminero had a home run yesterday.
09:28They were both magnificent in game five.
09:31Like, you had to get to the Rays while they were down, and you weren't able to.
09:35And that's the story of the series, and that's okay.
09:37It doesn't make anything short of a successful season for the Guardians.
09:41That still exists.
09:42And I want to make it clear that if you're listening to this and thinking,
09:47oh, I'm disappointed.
09:48If you want to talk about the emotions of this event, I'm disappointed.
09:52But I'm not disappointed in them.
09:54I'm disappointed at the outcome, but I'm not disappointed in an organization
09:59that I think continues to do things in a way that they shouldn't be able to do it.
10:03I mean, Nick, they overachieved in a great, great way this year.
10:06This was not supposed to be an ALCS team.
10:08And the idea that they keep overachieving year in, year out,
10:11like, for everyone that doubts them in the beginning portion of the year,
10:14and I'm guilty of it, I feel like 12 years in a row being like,
10:17geez, I don't know, guys.
10:18I don't know about this one.
10:19I don't know that I can do that anymore.
10:21The amount of times they consistently just go out there
10:23and overachieve and overperform.
10:25Yeah, and it's weird because I've given up on them multiple times this year
10:29because it was like, they just don't have it.
10:30They just don't have it.
10:31But they just continued to fight.
10:33There was something uniquely Cleveland about this team.
10:36And maybe it's because a lot of these guys are going to be back next year.
10:40I'm proud of them, and I'm really curious to see where they go from there.
10:44Well, they still got to get better, obviously.
10:45Like, there's a lot of things they have to do to get better offensively.
10:47There's a reason why the Rays are always going to end up being either the team
10:51that made you fall short or any of those three AL teams we've talked about
10:55made you fall short.
10:56They need to be better offensively.
10:57If they're going to actually win the World Series, you have to take steps that way.
11:00But you have a foundation that you can at least play with now.
